Monday, 9 June 2014

RT Bestiary: Carnivorous Sand Clams

Time for some other beauties from the past :P

'Carnivorous Sand Clams'. Yup, that's it. Giant clams dug in the mud waiting for their prey. Galaxy is a tough place to live in. Deal with it.

There is some history about these. When I saw the beautiful Carnivorous Sand Clams by mighty Sho3box and told him so, he immediately offered himself to collect some shells for me. A few days later I had some Irish sea shells on my workbench. Amazing, uh? Beautiful story between oldgamers. Thanks, man! I owe you!

Sho3box had used individual bases for his Clams, but some of the ones I had were simply too large for that. So I tried a different approach, using old CDs (and a piece of card coming from nowhere):

Hmm, so here they are those old CD's I left on the seashore years ago!

The idea with those is using them as minefileds or something like that. At a determined moment, when a model comes into certain areas, the Game Master should say 'Oh, it looks like the floor was not that safe...' and then put the Clams on the board with some kind of mad laughter (that last part is essential).

So, when I was glueing the shells to the bases, I thought that some additional details would give them some life. Well, life... You know what I mean.

I guess this is exactly what they are supposed to do in game effects

The poor victim is a tank commander with his head replaced by this one from an Imperial Guard set. I used then some green stuff to sculpt the tongue and inner clam:

Kinda abstract, but you will see it better in a minute

I had to paint the inner side before I could glue the valvae. Once glued, it would be absolutely impossible!

Slurp slurp om nom nom

After sanding the bases I could get a rough idea of how all this was going to look like:

Nice day in the beach

Of course, once you sand a base, you have to paint it next. If not, you will have beach sand all over the place for months. I used different kinds of browns/ochres/greenish/greyish colours:

Now answer the wife when she asks what the hell is that on your keyboard. Come on, answer.

Then I slowly begun to paint the shells themselves. Not even tried a realistic approach. These are alien clams about 2 meters across, after all. I tried some kind of random patterns, almost like wooden streaks or so. Anything should work over here:

I just painted whatever the surface allowed me to do

So, after some hours, the results are like these:

I believe that one is smiling. Or licking its own... lips? Err... valv... ehhh... Whatever

A skull! A predator with a skull on it! This is Warhammer!

That one is having quite a heavy digestion

Let's go have a relaxing escape to the beach, they said

It will be fun, they said

Just ready to be set on any sandy game board

With this I'm done for the moment with the RT Bestiary, as I have nothing else. So I need to search over the internet for new ideas and models! I still have to keep on with the HeroQuest project (and the other hundred ones I still have pending...). However, I'm on a job trip again, so I won't be able to paint anything for a couple of weeks :(

But you won't get rid of me so easily! I still have some archive pics of my old projects, so I'll try to rescue them and post some of those during these days. I'll browse and see what can I find for you...

Its nice to see the shells used so well Suber, good stuff. You put some more effort into yours and really brought them to life :) It entertains me to think that the only two examples of RT Carnivorous Sand Clams that I have ever seen are both from a beach in rural Ireland :D

I base most of my terrain elements individually and then put sand clams/mines/trees/zombies/whatever on generic textured CDs as the game requires them. It makes them easier to store. You took advantage of the extra space to make those fun bits with the guy being eaten though, which makes me want to go back and add a couple more.

Haha, the Irish standard for the Galaxy! I like that!Woow, I'm looking forward to see those Bouncers, haha. I'm currently stuck in the middle of Germany with limited internet access, but I'll make my best to keep on lurking (and eventually posting!)